ARTIST STATEMENT

Although text and imagery have a tendency to compete for visual hierarchy, both are capable of enhancing certain qualities inherent in the other. It is this balance between image and text, visual and narrative, and ambiguity and clarity, that fascinates and inspires me; informing the creation of my artwork.

Each gritty abstraction, made from black acrylic on white panel, occasionally incorporating photographic elements through collage, is created through a process of either additive mark-making or scraping away at a paint covered surface – a creation and excavation. The paintings are produced using a variety of methods that differ based on the focus of the work. These include the direct application of paint on panel, etching – varying from preplanned to spontaneous making, projection, and transfer.

Different methods of art making result in different focuses and new balances between the elements of text and imagery. The layering and superimposing of text and imagery onto a surface is reminiscent of the complex and multilayered way humans make meaning. The result is a surface with a graphic visual quality due to high contrast and flattened and condensed space, which mimics print. The forms and abstractions serve to fragment the text and obscure the narrative in varying degrees, turning the words themselves into abstractions of meaning.

My work is a representation of my continuous search to discover my own balance between these two commonly-separated methods of communication; finding ways the two mediums may benefit each other when they overlap, obscure, and describe one another. I combine text and imagery in order to question the often-preconceived notions of how text and images interact, as well as how we make meaning out of what is visually provided for us – and what isn’t.